RE: embedded SQL Precompiler

Mark,

The standard version of Oracle does not allow you to select the
top xx records. You have to buy an add on product (forget the
name) that adds a LOT to the price. On V5R1 you can select
the top records. It is very difficult to provide this functionality in

the standard version of Oracle, MUCH more difficult than doing
the same thing on a pre-V5R1 iSeries. I have done it on both
systems and in Oracle most people would agree that it is ugly.

Oracle does have a built in row id that you can use to refer to
a row. It is a little more flexible than an RRN. Often doesn't do
what you want. With DB2 you can get better functionality with
a UDF, there is one at
http://cvs.sourceforge.net/cgi-bin/viewcvs.cgi/iseries-toolkit/CVSROOT/src/qrpglesrc/numseq.irp?rev=HEAD&content-type=text/vnd.viewcvs-markup


The place where Oracle beats DB2 is its hierarchical join.
That allows you to things like XML documents very nicely.
DB2 makes up for this in other areas like UDFs, procedures,
and security.

If you are really interested in comparing Oracle to DB2 on the
iSeries, I can get pricing, etc. The standard version of Oracle
seems to be a tease. By the time you buy all of the enterprise
tools and add ons, it is very expensive.

My experience with SQL server is limited, but on the one system
I worked on I was amazed that we had to run cleanup programs
that fixed problems caused when triggers and constraints do
not fire. Microsoft is kind enough to provide a nice utility that
allows you to create these fix programs. If you run the cleanup
often enough, you a unlikely to experience problems. If you
really need to ensure the integrity of your data you have to
verify that integrity when you access the records.

David Morris


>>> mlazarus@ttec.com 02/20/02 06:00PM >>>
Phil,

At 2/20/02 06:03 PM, you wrote:
>Are we missing any database functionality?

  As compared to what?  The rest of the SQL world?  PLENTY!  A couple
of
examples:  How would you retrieve the top 10 of a list?  SQL Server
and
Oracle (I believe) have TOP XX.  How about ROWNUM, which would allow me
to
retrieve, say, rows 50-100?  This is on V4.5, so my apologies to
Rochester
if these have been added in 5.1.

  -mark